Sneed: You know, theater is something I know so well, but I am a musician also. I play three different instruments.
Moore: Which ones?
Sneed: I play piano, guitar and recorder. I don’t claim to be awfully good at any of them, but I do play them. The thing is, you are not going to find anyone who is equally knowledgeable about all of the art forms. I don’t think that person exists. Whoever you get in a job like this is going to most likely come from one specific arts discipline. So you could get a dance person who doesn’t know as much about theater, or you could get a visual-art guy who doesn’t know as much about dance. I had a lot of musical training when I was younger, so music is not foreign to me. And being married to a costume designer, I have had a 25-year education in visual art. But I need to learn more about music and art and dance. I have always enjoyed collaborating with symphonies and dance companies and even art galleries.
Moore: So we have arrived at your two-part final question: First, what are your parting words to the people who love the Colorado Shakespeare Festival? What do you want them to know?
Sneed: I would love for the CSF constituents to know that I have been so impressed over the years with how loyal and supportive and passionate they are, not only about CSF in particular, but Shakespeare in general. They have so much passion for the work we do. There are a few people who have been coming since (the first season in) 1958. I run into so many people who say, “We have been coming since the ’60s,” or, “We first came in ’72 and we haven’t missed a summer since.” That kind of loyalty is, I think, unmatched, and I think that loyalty is there because of the playwright. When people get upset, it’s because they don’t feel we are doing enough Shakespeare, and that’s a good discussion to have. So I am just going to miss them terribly. I am going to miss giving my talks before each show. I am very emotional about this, and I have a hard time walking out the door because this organization meant something to me when I was a teenager, and it means something to me now. The only way I could do it is because I am going to another organization that I can say the same thing about.
Moore: And what do you want Arvada Center supporters to know about you as you walk in the door?
Sneed: I want them to know that I worked there as a young artist, and that I developed a love for the Arvada Center more than 35 years ago. Over all of these years, I have seldom run into an arts center, even in California, that even approaches the scale and scope and diversity of the Arvada Center. They aren’t out there. There are huge performing-arts centers that just do performing arts. And there are amazing museums out there in the world that just do fine arts or visual arts. But the Arvada Center is unique. And I just feel incredibly honored to get a chance to come back and give to an organization that gave so much to me, off and on, for the first seven years of its existence.
Moore: You almost worked with Jim Hunt back in the day, because he was in that first company.
Sneed: Actually, I did work with Jim Hunt. He directed me there in “South Pacific,” in, I think, 1977 or ’78. I played one of the sailors who sang “There is Nothing Like a Dame” and all of that. And then he was in “The Contrast,” with me. That was the one that got the bad review in The Denver Post. He was not a distracting element, by the way … I was.
